Making a Meal(y) of it.

Firstly I can no longer rely on the sympathy vote at home after having the rest of my stitches out and bandages removed. No more peeled grapes for me & no longer making a meal out of my incapacity. As it was forcibly pointed out to me if a rare bird was at stake I'd be there but when it came to helping with the house work I had a bad foot............................

Secondly, in light of recent Earth shattering events in the birding World, I wish to point out no captive birds have been photographed for this blog – hence the crap pictures.

Well would you Adam & sodding Eve it. After drying the camera out and walking around Stanney Woods looking for the Mealy Redpoll (with no luck) I returned home to find another one in the garden! Redpoll’s are normally passage migrants over the house and never stop! This one was ranging between the front of the house and a neighbours garden, feeding in birch trees but was very flighty and for some reason was getting chased off by the local House Sparrows who launched themselves from our laurel hedge everytime it came near. What has our society come to when we now have gangs of delinquent House Sparrows chasing off interlopers on their ‘patch’.

A mission to Hilbre was rudely interrupted by a rapidly encroaching tide and I ended up roosting on Little Eye drying my socks in the winter sunshine until the waters receeded enough to make the crossing and meet up with Degsy in the Obs. Where's Canute when you need him. Still, the enforced stop over gave me a chance of cracking views of the visiting Brent Geese. In total we counted 141 - 138 Pale-bellied and 3 Dark- bellied. There plenty of Cormarants around with a record count last week of 1,700+ - amazing how they get mistaken for geese when flying in formation!

Not to be mistaken with:

Plenty of these:

14+ of these:
One of these:
And 25+ of these seen at Hale. The Cheshire hotspot for Corn Buntings................